Dewey will pay to shred old client files

The hits just keep on coming for Dewey & LeBoeuf, as the bankrupt law firm agreed on Friday to pay up to $1.4 million to destroy old client files.

Roughly 345,000 boxes of files, some dating back to the 1930s, remained in storage facilities following the firm’s Chapter 11 filing last spring, Thomson Reuters reports. In a court filing last June, Dewey announced plans to destroy the boxes but did not specify how it would pay, leading the firm’s storage facilities—including Iron Mountain Inc. and CitiStorage—to fear that they might be responsible for the costs.

But Dewey quelled those concerns with last week’s filing. As part of the deal, the storage facilities will destroy the boxes of files and provide Dewey with a certificate of destruction in exchange for a $4 reimbursement per box (or $1.38 million total).

In court papers, the firm said that its secured lenders support the plan and that the agreement will “strike an appropriate balance between [Dewey’s] obligations to the estate and the potentially applicable and professional obligations.”

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn will consider the proposal on Jan. 24.